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Getting Salem extradited may not be easy

Jake Khan in Bombay

Though Abu Salem Ansari has reportedly been detained in a Persian Gulf emirate, his extradition to India remains a distant possibility.

This is not the first time Salem, one of Bombay's most wanted gangsters, has been detained in the region. Soon after the murder of music baron Gulshan Kumar in Bombay on August 12, 1997, police in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, had arrested and held him for more than three months.

But he was never positively identified as he had assumed the identity of a Pakistani national, Aqueel Khan. Ultimately he was given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to go despite intense pressure from the Indian government.

This time too, the man who has been detained has not yet been positively identified as the man wanted for several crimes in India, though he has been in custody for a week.

While Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal disclosed on Wednesday that Salem had been arrested in the Gulf region, he did not specify where. Senior crime branch officers believe he may have been arrested in Sharjah, in the UAE. Others speculate that he must have been detained in Bahrain, the base of his underworld ally Ali Budesh.

But even if Salem is being held in Bahrain, it may not bring much cheer to the government. In 1996, the Bahrain police had arrested Anees Ibrahim, younger brother of gangster Dawood Ibrahim. A team from the Central Bureau of Investigation even flew out to the emirate to try and take him into custody, but had to return empty-handed.

India's record of getting wanted men extradited from foreign lands is dismal. Barring the cases of Om Prakash 'Babloo' Srivastava from Singapore and Niranjan Shah from Dubai, the authorities have always failed in their mission. Among their major failures, besides Anees Ibrahim and Abu Salem, are suspected drug baron Iqbal Mirchi (London, 1995), Nadeem Akhtar Saifee (London, 1999) and Rajendra Nikhalje alias Chhota Rajan (Bangkok, 2000).

"We will be genuinely surprised if we can get Salem extradited this time," admitted an officer from the CBI's special task force in Bombay. "But if he is deported instead of being extradited, we have a strong chance of getting him on Indian soil."

An accused in the Bombay serial blasts of March 12, 1993, Salem has become a major headache for Bollywood bigwigs. Besides Gulshan Kumar's murder, he is believed to have ordered the killing of Ajit Diwan, secretary to Manisha Koirala and Aftab Shivdasani, in August this year. He is accused of 17 other murders and scores of extortion cases.

Interestingly, Abu Salem figures in police records as the errand boy who, at Anees Ibrahim's instance, delivered an AK-56 assault rifle to film star Sanjay Dutt in February 1993 at the latter's Bandra residence.

But after Gulshan Kumar's murder in 1997, Salem began to drift away from Dawood Ibrahim's syndicate, with Anees Ibrahim remaining his only support.

Meanwhile, the CBI sought his extradition from the UAE since his name figured in an Interpol red-corner notice issued against 39 fugitives of Indian origin. Salem, however, escaped to Pakistan and remained underground for a while.

He resurfaced in Dubai in 1998, but another gangster, Irfan Ghoga, disappeared and police picked up Salem again. He somehow secured interim bail and disappeared for good.

Soon after, Salem's split with Dawood was complete. He then tried to set up base in Bahrain with Budesh and established safe houses in Nairobi, Kenya, and Zurich, Switzerland. Later, with the help of his influential in-laws, he got a visa for the United States.

According to crime branch officers, Salem then took to threatening film personalities from his New Jersey home.

In one of the transcripts of film financier Bharat Shah's alleged conversations with Dawood aide Chhota Shakeel, the latter has hinted at Salem's narrow escape after he backed out of a film show in New Jersey.

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